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Morgan Freeman is the voice for Mark Zuckerberg's AI, Jarvis.

By The Count & The Count - on 21 Dec 2016, 11:48am

Mark Zuckerberg gives first look of his new AI, Jarvis.

Earlier today, Mark Zuckerberg (or many readers will just know him as Facebook CEO) has posted a video of him and his family living with the newest member of the household, an artificial intelligence system that Zuckerberg is calling Jarvis.

That's right, it's named after the same A.I. in Marvel's Ironman.

Zuckerberg announced at the start of the year that he wanted to build a simple AI that could control his home, including his lights, temperature, appliances, music and security. He also wanted it to learn his tastes and patterns, learn new words and concepts, and even entertain Max - his daughter. You can read how he did it on his blog post.

In the video, Jarvis helps Zuckerberg wake up, get dressed and eat dry toast. Jarvis is also seen chatting to his baby daughter in Mandarin, albeit with some difficulty getting the language correct. Fun fact: Jarvis is voiced by the actor Morgan Freeman (if you haven't realized it by now), and because he won the popularity contest on Zuckerberg’s Facebook post seeking input on who should act as the voice for his AI. 

Zuckerberg has said the most difficult part of Jarvis for him to work on was face recognition. This is because people look relatively similar as compared to telling apart two random objects. But Facebook's research and the technology used on the social media platform for facial recognition from photos has helped to improve Jarvis in this area.

The first version of the Jarvis app is complete for iOS, and plans to build an Android version is already underway. "Finally, over time it would be interesting to find ways to make this available to the world. I considered open sourcing my code, but it's currently too tightly tied to my own home, appliances and network configuration. If I ever build a layer that abstracts more home automation functionality, I may release that. Or, of course, that could be a great foundation to build a new product."

But of course, there were some comical pains experienced by Mrs Zuckerberg as seen in the second video below. Watch out for some cool sound bites from Mr Terminator too.

Source: Mark Zuckerberg's Blog

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